How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

December 31, 2003

It took almost all of 2003, but on December 30—yesterday at 5:00 pm—I found my true love. And the greatest thing about it is that Laurel embraced her also. A threesome! Cool! Also hot, because sparks fly when you touch her in a certain way. Her name? Electricity.

Along with tens of thousands of other people in the mid-Willamette valley, we lost our power about 3:00 am early Monday morning. We got it back at 5:00 pm Tuesday afternoon. So we had some 38 hours to ponder how much Electricity does for us, and how under-appreciated she had been in our lives. Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Oh, yes, especially when it is Electricity who is missing from your home.

The power outage was almost fun for, oh, about six hours. Not counting the time I was asleep, from 3 am to 7 am, it is more accurate to say two hours. In this initial blackout period, I brought in wood for our woodstove, gingerly tested the flue with a few pieces of crumpled newspaper to see if we were going to burn the house down once we got a fire going, as Laurel fully expected (we hadn’t used the woodstove in three or four years, and haven’t had it cleaned for longer than that), and successfully cooked vegetarian sausages in a pan on the top of the stove once the fire got going (and not so successfully burned two pieces of toast by putting them directly on the stove, in the process branding the stove with rectangular bread-shaped marks that reminded me of my idiocy every time I looked at them over the next 32 hours, which was often, given the need to frequently add wood to keep our house temperature in the neighborhood of 58 degrees).

Yes, cooking, and burning, breakfast was fun. It was all downhill, pleasure-wise, from there on out. By Tuesday afternoon, when the power blessedly came back on, our house had become a tangle of generator-linked extension cords, candles, flashlights, battery-powered lights that barely lit anything, unwashed dishes, food that once resided in the refrigerator but now sat outside the front door (so we didn’t have to open the fridge more than was absolutely necessary), five gallon water containers, toilet flushing buckets, jackets/gloves/hats/blankets, and assorted other Emergency Paraphernalia.

On the plus side, our little-used gas generator started after a few pulls of the starter cord. On the minus side, the Man of the House, the Protector of His Woman and Dog, found that the Hines’ three five-gallon gasoline containers contained, at most, not the potential 15 gallons, but more like two and a half (the roads to town were icy and/or closed by downed power lines, so we couldn’t get more gas). This meant that, as in much of Iraq, power could be supplied to our refrigerator, freezer, and water pump only for a few hours a day, since we didn’t know how long the outage would last. Also as in Iraq, we quickly became irritated at the powers-that-be, even though we realized (or hoped, at least) that they had our best interests at heart.

With no TV to watch, and minimal light to read by, my primary entertainment was phoning the PGE automated outage reporting number every hour or so to check on the progress, or, more accurately, non-progress, of the repair work. On my first call I got a real live human being, who it was impossible to become upset with, because she was very nice, and implied that her normal job didn’t involve taking outage reports. But after that I got the usual automated system, which tells you how many customers in your neighborhood are affected (170), and how many calls have been received about the outage (at first, less than 100; by Tuesday afternoon, over 1400—so I wasn’t the only one calling every hour or two).

After a few hours the system also started telling me: “Crews are working to restore power to your area. We expect that power will be restored by…X:XX am/pm.” Thankfully, the computer-generated voice who provided these reports, issued in a marvelously cheery and confident tone that undoubtedly was selected by a consulting firm from countless female cheery-and-confident-voices, wasn’t connected to a real person, because I soon began swearing at the voice, and making threats that would likely have gotten me arrested if they had been heard by a conscious human being, or at least had me referred to an anger-management counselor.

Here’s my advice for PGE: in the future, when a power line goes down, just say something like, “We expect that power will be restored in fourteen years, or before the Second Coming, whichever happens later.” Then customer’s hopes will be dashed from the outset; they will fall into a depressed stupor, visualizing a lifetime of burning toast on their wood stove, gradually going blind from reading by candlelight, and sexlessly sleeping with your increasingly stinky/shower-deprived spouse.

Instead, PGE made the mistake of saying that the power would be on at 10:15 pm Monday night. So, naturally, I counted down the minutes, telling Laurel, “just 20 more minutes…just ten more minutes…just one more minute…OK, the power should be on!” Except, it wasn’t. And then it wasn’t some more. And then the god-damn cheery-and-confident voice told me that it would be on at 11:59 pm. Except it wasn’t. And then the cursed whore’s-daughter told me that it would be on at 1:30 the following afternoon, or so I recall. Except it wasn’t. And so it went, lies piled upon lies piled upon lies, all promulgated from the Enron-infested nest of corporate vipers known as PGE, Pathetic Goddamn Energy company, useless for everything except sending profits back to Texas, draining Oregon dry of essential maintenance and repair crews.

At least this was my attitude until the power came back on. Then I would have kissed those wonderful dedicated guys (and maybe even some gals) who worked such long hours in the darkness and cold to bring back Comedy Central to us. We love you! And even more, we love who you serve, Electricity. We have set up a shrine to this Blessed Goddess who brings light and warmth into our souls, and vow to never let a day go by without singing your praises. May your mysterious grace flow without interruption. And realizing that grace goes hand-in-hand with effort, we also have ten gallons of gas sitting in our garage, so that we may manifest you on our own more fully.

December 23, 2003

This is indeed a sign that our marriage is well into a second decade—when I went into Morlan’s Plumbing last month, ordered a “whisper quiet” Panasonic bathroom exhaust fan, and said, “It’s a Christmas present for my wife.” Strangely, the Morlan employees seemed surprised at this, and even told me that this was the first time they were aware of a ceiling fan being a gift.

Well, they don’t know Laurel, and how sensitive she is to loud noises. She carries ear plugs in her purse, and puts them on in a theatre whenever a movie sound track rises above her comfort zone, which basically is anything louder than a whisper. This helps explain why “The Last Samurai” and “Lord of the Rings” are not high on her favorite movie list. If people/orcs could be killed in an absolutely silent fashion, I think she would have liked these movies a lot more.

Anyway, if you use our downstairs bathroom, this is why there is a hole in the ceiling, tastefully covered up with a piece of cardboard. We hired a guy to put in the new fan, and take out our old fan—which was working fine, and had a light/heater to boot. It just was too noisy for Laurel’s liking. I had read in Consumer Reports that anyone who could do simple wiring and patch drywall could install a bathroom fan, so, fortunately, this convinced us that we needed some expert help.

After this professional remodeler had spent an hour trying to get the old fan out, muttering under his breath, “how the ____ did they get this in here?,” the wisdom of hiring him was evident. I stood in the doorway trying to appear helpful, occasionally offering a piece of advice which the guy, entirely appropriately, ignored. Finally he was able to remove the fan, and I helpfully trotted upstairs to get the new fan, which, we immediately noticed, was quite a bit too wide to fit into the space the old fan had just come out of.

So we paid the guy $100 for his time, and took down the maximum measurements for a newer new fan. He kindly assured us that there was no way that we could have known how big the space was that the new fan had to fit into, which may or may not be true. But this made us feel better when we went back to Morlan’s and had to pay an $80 restocking fee to return the old new fan, after which we were able to order a newer new fan.

For the past few weeks our downstairs bathroom has been wonderfully quiet while we take our showers, just as Laurel wanted, since there is no fan at all to turn on. And also no heater. The only sound I hear as I dry myself is my teeth chattering, since I have to open the outside window to get ventilation into the bathroom. In line with our usual remodeling luck, we thus have now spent $180 to replace a fully functional fan/light/heater unit with a hole in our ceiling and a piece of cardboard.

However, it all will be worth it when the new whisper-quiet fan is whispering away, and Laurel hugs me with tears in her eyes, saying, “Thank you so much; this is the greatest gift a girl has ever gotten.” Alternatively, if the newer new fan somehow doesn’t fit, I’ll be the one with tears in my eyes, anticipating my third trip to Morlan’s Plumbing, another restocking fee, and having to explain how, once again, we were able to special order a fan that wouldn’t go into our ceiling.

December 19, 2003

Oh, my, ten days since my last posting—must be almost a HinesSight procrastination record. In my defense (as if I need one; heck, it’s my weblog, and I can do what I want with it, but the Protestant ethic is hard to get rid of), the holidays spread stress, along with good cheer. In my experience, the good cheer starts about now, the weekend before Christmas, by which time we start to get out of the preparing-for-Christmas mode, and begin entering the actually-enjoy-Christmas mode. Anyway, here’s my attempt to catch up on the trajectory of our mid-December life:

Artificial tree is up and decorated, our second year of spurning the many thousands of real trees that are grown just a mile or two from our home. We love it! Looks almost exactly like real tree; no watering; can bend branches as desired; no cutting required; no tying on top of car and worrying whether it will fall off on the way home; no interminable arguing with Laurel at the Christmas tree lot about which tree to bring home. It took us a long time to become converts to artificiality, but now we’re firm believers. You can have your reality—give us fakeness that works.

Monday night movies, they’ve become a ritual, for the past two weeks at least. Cheaper and uncrowded, good reasons to forego Friday and Saturday. “Love Actually” was actually most enjoyable; we were amazed to read a review that absolutely trashed the movie. I felt inspired and uplifted by it, which, admittedly, is what the movie was carefully designed to make me feel. But, hey, around Christmas that’s what we want and expect—artificial feelings (and artificial trees).

I was similarly inspired and uplifted by “The Last Samurai.” On the other hand, Laurel stoically sat through the movie’s two and a half hours until the closing credits, and then turned to me with an irritated expression and said, “I didn’t know it was going to be so violent.” Once again, as with the “Lord of the Rings” and many other marvelous movies that don’t feature six women sitting around talking about their feelings, I got blamed for inflicting battle scenes on Laurel’s sensitive psyche. And this was after she suggested that we see “The Last Samurai.”

Earth to Laurel: what do you expect a samurai movie is going to feature, a quilting bee? At least these movies stimulate some serious conversation between us. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to patiently explain to Laurel that (1) the orcs that are slaughtered plentifully in “The Lord of the Rings” movies are not real, and (2) even if they were real, they deserve to be killed, because they are trying to take over Middle Earth. God, it’s so simple! Of course, I have a much deeper understanding of all this, because I read the Trilogy several times in college, and she didn’t.

Shopping has been as pleasant as possible, considering that I generally do the bulk of my non-grocery shopping on the Internet in cyberspace reality, preferring to have as little as possible to do with the whole drive/park/walk/choose/talk/buy experience in physical reality. Why go through all that trouble when you can have stuff delivered right to your door with just a few mouse clicks? However, two weekends ago Laurel suggested that we go to the Saturday market in Portland, and we had a great time. There is indeed something different about buying crafts from the person who makes them, and being able to joke and chat with them about their art. Well, I’m not sure that a handmade catnip-stuffed cat toy can be called “art,” but I am sure that my daughter’s pets will like it (Celeste, don’t let them read my weblog until December 26th!).

On the land use front, our visit to the Saturday market reminded us that the ambience in downtown Portland is so different from the boring sidewalks of Salem. We can’t understand why there is such resistance popping up to the dreaded “mixed-use” zoning that Salem Futures is, appropriately, proposing for our not-so-fair city. It’s ridiculous, the argument that allowing residences to co-exist with businesses will lead to a lowering of property values. Yeah, right, as if the Pearl District in Portland is withering away. But the right-wingers who are challenging Salem Futures aren’t exactly great thinkers, as you can tell from this bizarre web site. Who knew that the push for mixed-use zoning is an international plot being directed from Switzerland, probably by the same people in control of the black United Nations helicopters that are about ready to be used in a take over of America by Hillary Clinton and the other One World-ers.

We’re pleased to be part of this conspiracy, and are hoping that a Green Santa Claus will bring us a present of a hearings officer order denying the Nielsen lot partitioning. The two-week open record period is over, so we should be learning the decision fairly soon, maybe before the end of the year. Laurel is relieved to finally be done with all the work that was involved in preparing for the pre-Thanksgiving hearing on our appeal. Hopefully justice will be done this time around, and our neighborhood will be saved from one more well sucking up the already inadequate supply of groundwater, and one more house on land that wasn’t planned for an extra lot.

December 09, 2003

Laurel is a big Doonesbury comic fan, as am I. But she was unaware, until I pointed it out to her, that the Doonesbury series about Schwarzenegger’s investigation of himself, seeking to find out whether he truly groped women who didn’t want to be groped, was absolutely based on truth (click on dates before and after the link above to get the full Doonesbury take on the story). The governor of California really is investigating himself, which goes to prove the cliché that truth is stranger than fiction.

For additional confirmation, check out this recent CNN story on the subject. Wonderfully, the article says, “Prior to the election, Schwarzenegger issued a blanket apology to anyone he offended, and he said that after the election, he wanted to look into the complaints. But he said Tuesday that the vow to investigate the charges ‘was meant much more for me, that I wanted to look into it myself.’ He said, ‘And so that doesn't mean that I won't do that. But the bottom line is, right now, I'm focusing on this [governing California?], and there is no investigation.’”

December 08, 2003

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Old anti-war chants keep going through my head, as true for Iraq as they were for Vietnam. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many children are you going to kill today?” Answer, for Bush, nine. How much more United States wrought terror are we willing to condone?

December 03, 2003

A few hours ago I went into the Courthouse Athletic Club’s karate room, where for nine years I used to train with some great guys and gals—and where I still like to work out several times a week, enjoying the wood floor and the memories. When I started to take my shoes off, and put my sweat towel down, I saw a sheet of paper on the counter with Gordon Waite’s photograph, and a caption “In Memoriam.”

Gordon was a good karate buddy. He died unexpectedly Thanksgiving morning, at the age of 72. That is just so wrong. And yet, it must be so right. I don’t understand such things. Because I don’t, I hit the heavy bag as hard as I could for three minutes with tears in my eyes. And then I felt better. That was my eulogy to you, Gordon. I’m sure you would have appreciated that gesture better than any sorts of words, but I feel like I have to write about you as well as hit the bag for you.

Gordon had spasmodic torticollis. This is a neurological disorder that, in Gordon’s case, caused his head to twitch uncontrollably most of the time, and also kept his head twisted in one direction. He had to go up to the medical school regularly for botulinum toxin injections in the contracting muscles on his neck. Gordon would joke about this. I never heard him complain about his condition. He was 100 times braver than I am, and he shouldn’t have died at 72.

Gordon used to be in the Special Forces, in Vietnam. He was a colonel. I’m sure he did some nasty stuff; but Gordon never backed away from a fight, especially with what life gave him. He was a paratrooper, and a ski soldier. He told me that he raced cars in Europe. He took up karate about the same time I did, but he was seventeen years older than me. And he could only look in one direction—not an asset, to say the least, when you are sparring. Even less of an asset when the training drill is to stand in the middle of a circle of six or eight karate students, who attack you one at a time from any direction.

But Gordon kept training, along with me and our other comrades, and we all became close—not because we shared our deepest feelings in words, but because we did something really difficult together, and sweated our way through unbelievably tough times. When I wanted to quit, because I didn’t think my body could do any more, I’d sneak a glance at Gordon, and I knew that I could keep going as long as he could.

Gordon would go down to Ashland every summer for the full three days of an intense karate training camp that I could barely stomach for a single day. I’d arrive for the last day and Gordon would come up and greet me, his feet wrapped in bloody bandages from the constant wear and tear on a hardwood floor. And I’d say to myself, “If I could only be as tough as Gordon someday.”

Probably nobody reading this knew Gordon, the individual. But in a way we all know Gordon, the universal Gordon who we recognize all the time, in others as in ourselves. Gordon is the best part of us, the part that carries on and doesn’t quit no matter what the pain, because that is what duty and honor demands. Gordon would break his hand. And he’d keep on training. Gordon would break a rib. And he’d keep on training.

Gordon was determined to earn a black belt from Sensei Nishiyama, the leader of Shotokan karate, no matter how long it took. Spasmodic torticollis. Broken bones. Other injuries. Turning sixty-five, and then seventy. Didn’t matter. Gordon kept going. Earlier this year, I was told, Gordon became a black belt. I knew he could do it. But I also felt that Gordon always was a black belt, not in karate, but in life. I only saw Gordon once, I believe, after I started training in a different martial arts system three years ago. So why do I miss him so much? Go figure. All I can say is that people like Gordon don’t enter our lives very often, because lions are rare, and sheep common. Keep on fighting, guy. I will never forget you.

December 02, 2003

We got ourselves into the Christmas spirit, Laurel and Brian style, by going to see “Bad Santa” last night. Since the reviews of this movie had emphasized that no one should see it who expects to be uplifted or inspired, naturally it was tops on our Must-See Holiday Flick list. Our sense of humor tilts decidedly in the direction of wry dry cynicism, so a movie that stars Billie Bob Thornton as a drunken, womanizing, thieving Santa is right up our alley.

We also love HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Comedy Central’s “Reno 911”—when we’re not watching PBS or listening to classical music, I mean, which is almost all of the time, of course, these other shows being a mere drop in the ocean of our exceedingly cultured entertainment proclivities. I should add, though, that the only movie I’ve ever heard Laurel laugh out loud at was the “South Park Movie,” which featured gads of fart jokes, one of which, as I recall, led to Laurel’s rare mirthful outburst.

She chuckled often through “Bad Santa,” as did I. Right off the bat, as Bad Santa starts talking about his unredeemably shitty life, you know that you’re in for a treat—a brutally honest movie. Well, brutally probably isn’t the right word, because Thornton and his cronies are always a pleasure to watch, even when they’re doing the most disgusting things. I usually don’t enjoy watching drunk scenes, but somehow Thornton makes inebriation seem almost like a holy experience, a diving into the Divine Pile of Crap that saints, seers, and mystics tell us this world is, compared to the Infinitely More Divine Heap of Wonder that lies above, in the spiritual realm.

In this movie, though, you never get above crap level, except at the very end, when Thornton does one quasi-good deed. Up to then, his only epiphany was when he beat up a boy who had been giving another kid a bad time. “That felt good,” Thornton says, “after hitting him in the eye I feel like my life finally has meaning.”

It isn’t all that much of a stretch to find some connections between Bad Santa and the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. As I noted in an earlier posting, the Stoics want us to look at life just as it is with crystal-clear clarity, no value judgments of good or bad covering up the simple “this is.” Bad Santa has more than a little Stoicism in him, though you wouldn’t guess it when he launches into one of his drunken tirades at the department store Santa Section.

Thornton realizes that sometimes it is a lie to look on the bright side of life, because there isn’t any bright side. It’s all darkness, depression, despair. Bad Santa embraces the unbelievably shitty truth of his life because that is what he has to hold onto. I admired that. Truth-tellers are so rare. Bad Santa said that his father wasn’t trying to teach him a lesson when he slammed him into a wall; his father wasn’t trying to make him into a man when he beat him up; his father was just a mean sadistic son-of-a-bitch who liked to hurt people. End of story. Pour another drink.

Next we’ll go see “Love Actually,” or some other feel-good movie. But “Bad Santa” made me feel good because it reminded me that life doesn’t always feel good, and that’s just fine, The Way It Is.